The Target? - SPOILER ALERT!

I think the point is that the identity of the target wasn't important to the assassin as long as the target was celebrated. If his objective was political, he'd have waited for the prototype of Ross Perot. If he wanted to shoot exhibitors of crummy hair styles and lousy songs, Henry Gibson's character would have died. He shot at the people at the center of the stage. Through hurting someone famous, he became famous too.

It's absolutely chilling to watch this again. Like seeing a Mark David Chapman with even less focus.

"Or perhaps it was a jealous rage, in that he had never experienced the family love captured in her song."

I think this is probably closest to whatever "truth" underlies his actions. Remember the heated phone conversation with his mother where he ends the call prematurely but fakes a codial "goodbye" in front of LA Joan, for her benefit.

He was obviously in Nashville, hovering around the Walker campaign and its activities, carrying his gun in the locked fiddle case, with the key on a chain around his neck, with a purpose or design. We can surmise that he had a plan to assassinate Walker, and that he was going to do so at Centennial Park that day, or continue to watch him in an ongoing plot to do so at some point in the near future. Something about Barbara Jean's song caused him to snap before he was ready to do so.

Although, I will say, on re-watching the film, there's a red herring there, where Kenny shows up at Barbara Jean's concert. The only thing I can conclude about that is that he was follong Del and Triplett, trying to get a location on Walker's whereabouts, maybe?

I always thought it was ironic one person became infamous and another person became famous due to the same event. I thought with Kenny, no one but him really knew or understood his delusional mindset. Everyone was living in their own little worlds and his was the most incomprehensible. It certainly made the quest for fame not seem as innocuous.